Passport to nowhere

I hate any kind of bureaucracy as it induces in me Kafkaesque delusion. Last year I had to fill out a tax return for the first time and received many hours of therapy from various staff members at the inland revenue who would gently reassure me that it was 'unlikely I would go to prison for fraud.'  So it was with a heavy heart that I booked an appointment to get a new passport.

As the fear of form filling set in so did the horror of the passport photo. A passport photo, like a dog, is not just for Christmas; it travels with you, for ten years, and if you get kidnapped in a foreign country it ends up on the news. This panicked me. I must remember to supply my friends with a series of approved photographs that they can distribute to news agencies in that event. 

Vanity took me to Snappy Snaps to have a real person take my picture rather than a machine with a voice. I don't think the women in the shop understood the gravity of the situation and after several attempts I settled for an average representation of my features. In the photo I have the complexion of cheddar and one eyebrow raised in a quizzical fashion, I hope this is not seen as an affront to immigration officials at airports, I am not questioning their authority nor the splendour of their country. 

When I arrived at the passport office my slightly disappointing photo suddenly didn't seem so bad as I looked at the girl in front of me in the queue . She was about 18, with the longest false eyelashes I have ever seen and bright blue hair; something I fear she will come to regret when she is 25 and a lawyer travelling to Washington DC for her 'big break'.

At the passport office,they believe themselves to be an airport-perhaps because of the association of travel. As a result your belongings are x-rayed and you are frisked, but the staff are very nice and as they frisk you ask if you are having a nice day and tell you that you look a bit tired and that its lucky you are going on a holiday soon. 

I was issued with a ticket with a number on it, like at a deli counter. I sat down and waited for my number to be called. 1969. This was harder than it sounds as the numbers are called out without any logical order. 

'1987'

'2045'

'30040'

'1'

They might as well be shouting out;

'cow'

'sandwich'

'orange juice'

'girl guides'

I was there for about 20 minutes when the robot voice of god boomed

'1961'

Nobody moved. There was a pause of a few minutes 

'1961'

Still no takers. 'What an idiot!' I thought.  '...why would you take a ticket and leave without telling anyone?' I tutted and muttered something about people being inconsiderate. '1961' was called a few more times before they gave up.

A few minutes later:

'1969'

I stood up and showed a man with a walkie-talkie my ticket so he could tell me which counter to go to. He looked at me. He looked at my ticket.

'You've missed it!' He said.

'What? No I haven't!' I said indignantly as I snatched the ticket back. There in black emboldened numbers was written;

'1961'

I shouldn't hate bureaucracy, its not bureaucracy's fault, its mine.

 

You know...for bears

The other day I was standing at the bar of a once brilliant- now awful- pub in Islington whose declivity is reflected in the fact that the menu doesn't refer to cheese as cheese but rather as "cow's curd."

The women standing next to me was incredibly posh with blond hair and an expensive handbag; she was anything between 28 and 40 years old- probably closer to 28 but her sloaney outfit betrayed her youth. She was in conversation with the bar man, I had been waiting a while and so resented their false camaraderie until the conversation turned...

Woman: Oh god I'm just so shattered at the moment...

Barman: Really?

Woman: Yah, my sister and I have just started a charity. I'm working all the hours God's sends its farking awful.

Barman: That sounds great though, what kind of charity?

Woman: A bear charity.

Barman: A bear charity?

Woman: Yes, that's right, a charity for bears

Barman: What kind of bears?

Woman: ALL bears (she pauses) we DON'T discriminate.

God bless you Islington. God bless you

In the right direction

I've discovered my new favourite thing, it costs me nothing, but fills me with self worth and a sense of achievement.  

London makes people so inhibited that they will happily stand for hours lost and  confused, squinting at a map not wishing to ask for help. It is my belief that there are probably people who have been standing on street corners in Soho for months- not selling their wares but rather trying to establish where.

I won't just help people who ask me...no the real work is to be done with those who won't or can't ask. Their little lost faces light up as I point them in the right direction, they weep with gratitude and I stride off...often in the wrong direction- but that doesn't matter because at least they know where they are going.

I would recommend you try it; it's budget philanthropy for those who can't afford the real thing.

Hair like ice cream. Ice cream like hair

Whoop whoop its the sound of the police

About ten days and quite a lot of penicillin later I was coughing like a miner (not a minor) so I decided to go back to the doctors. 

The doctor I had seen previously was all booked up so I went to see my least favourite doctor. She is my least favourite because 

a. she always looks very serious 

b. she nods very seriously whilst I talk

and 

c. she is very serious.  

She has a long face and quite a severe hair cut, I imagine she is married to either a vet or a vicar and I think she spends much of her time day dreaming about owning a cheese shop or having an affair with the owner of a cheese shop.

I explained about the noise and the coughing. She nodded seriously. She had a listen, she said the noise was but a whisper and that a piece of asthmatic equipment that can act like a nebuliser, some steroids and a rest should do the trick.

Then she paused.

'Now' she said seriously 'I'm not by any means suggesting you have this...'

'Oh god, I'm dying' I thought

'...but' she continued with severity 'there's this website.'

'I have a website in my lungs?' I wondered silently.

'...compiled by a GP. This website is dedicated entirely to adult whooping cough'

I don't know why it isn't spelt hooping cough, whooping cough sounds like an illness you should only have during significant periods of celebration.

'Now, you can go on the site and listen to recordings of coughing, and if your cough sounds like the cough on the website, you probably have whooping cough' She said matter-of-factly. 

'So, here I am in a doctors surgery and you are sitting near me and I keep on coughing, but you are unwilling to tell me if I have whooping cough but rather are asking me to go and listen to recordings of coughs on the internet and diagnose myself....isn't that your job?'

Of course I didn't say that. What I did say was;

'What if I have it?'

'Oh' she said seriously 'there's no cure, but its nice to know!'

'Is it?'

I left and went home to study www.whoopingcough.net

I shouldn't have been so scornful, its probably the best website ever! It's run by a doctor who bares more than a passing resemblance to Harold Shipman. He says;

"My mission is to make health professionals aware that whooping cough is much more common than they realise, that it now affects ALL AGES....This site gives relief to those who have it but cannot get anyone to believe them... "

God bless him!

Apparently...

"Attempts to get benefit from cough suppressants or antibiotics are generally futile"

and most damningly...

"Whooping cough is estimated to be 100 times more common than official statistics show!"

In your face statistics!

If you think you or someone you know has whooping cough, please click here

...I don't

What ails me

I started finding it difficult to breathe. 

Breathing became something I thought about all the time occasionally having to remind myself to inhale.  

This is a strange sensation akin to when some says "think about blinking!" Suddenly this is all you can think about and you start blinking repeatedly like someone who has just been woken up by having a bright light shone in their face.

The lack of breathing had been causing me to have nightmares about asphyxiation and occasionally I'd feel faint, so I thought, I'll go to the doctors, that's what I'll do. So I did.

I told the doctor what was happening, he stethoscoped me and said with some ambiguity, "You have  a noise on your lung" he did not extrapolate as to what kind of noise, was it a hiss or a rattle or a disconcerting whistle? We shall never know for he did not say. "This indicates you have a lung infection."

I looked at him blankly as he gave me a prescription for penicillin. 

"Thank you" I said not thinking to ask any questions. "I've been feeling pretty..."

"...Crappy" he interrupted.

"Yes" I said.

"Right, well thanks for coming in and sorry you're feeling so shit!"

"Erm..thanks" He nodded and smiled and showed me the door.